Pope pulls ambassador to Dominican Republic amid abuse allegations

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Pope Francis is seen during his weekly open-air general audience on September 4, 2013 in St.Peters square at the Vatican.

Story highlights

"We have formally opened an investigation," the attorney general says

The pope recalls the Vatican's ambassador to the Dominican Republic

A report connected the nuncio to child abuse and pedophilia, church rep says

Wesolowski could not be reached for comment

Prosecutors began a criminal investigation Wednesday into the Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, a day after a local church representative said the pope had recalled the envoy because of child abuse allegations.

"We have formally opened an investigation," Dominican Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito told reporters. "Here we have to work with two legal aspects, first national laws and also international laws in his status as a diplomat, which implies other mechanisms of investigation and judgment."

The Vatican confirmed Wednesday that Jozef Wesolowski had been removed from his post and that an investigation is under way but did not say what allegations were made.

Wesolowski had been an apostolic nuncio, the Vatican's official representative in the Dominican Republic.

But the pope pulled him from the post last month after an internal church report connected him with child abuse and pedophilia, according to Monsignor Agripino Nunez Collado, the rector of a Catholic university and spokesman for the church in the country.

"It is a situation that really shames and hurts the conscience of all Catholics," he told reporters Tuesday. "Really when there are these kinds of situations, justice must be done."